Palliative care: narratives of suffering in listening to the other

Abstract

This article is aimed at understanding the suffering of the caregiver facing the extreme situation of the end of existence. The study is qualitative – the methodological discipline of oral history in its thematic side – and it was carried out in the Paulo de Tarso Hospital, in Belo Horizonte/MG, Brazil. The participants of the study are caregivers, consisting of relatives of hospitalized patients and health professionals who accompany them. The narratives, collected through semi-structured interviews, were transcribed and broken down into analytical categories, by philosophical perspective of palliative care. The relevance of this study is found in the comprehension of the dimension of care that requires subtleties, sometimes only perceived through one look, one gesture, one conversation or silence. It was found that listening is essential for the human being to think, telling about his story, his choices and decisions, and, facing this subjectivity, trying to give sense and meaning to living, as a form of alleviating his pain and suffering.